Hinging on the speculative histories of objects, Kara Uzelman’s quasi-archaeological and anthropological assemblages use narrative, myth and tangential association to consider the immaterial qualities of the material world. Embodying a deliberate contradiction of material excess and material thrift, Uzelman’s configurations of gleaned objects and information could be undone and reassembled or returned to their prosaic origins at any moment, underscoring the temporality of objects, their fluctuating value as useful things, aesthetic objects, mnemonics, and narrative devices.

Uzelman’s The Cavorist Projects takes as its starting point eccentric scientist Joseph Cavor, a character from H.G. Wells’ 1901 novel The First Men on the Moon, who developed an anti-gravitational material he named “Cavorite.” Magnetic Stalactites (from The Cavorist Projects) are pendulous sculptures consisting of a collection of random metal detritus (tin cans, beer bottle caps, spoons, scissors, baking pans) that hang swarm-like from the gallery ceiling with great energy and leaps of the imagination. Magnetism emancipated from gravitational principles is harnessed as sculptural force; it shapes not only the narrative as a whole, but also, literally, the objects themselves.